Baptism?

September 14, 2015

Ia ora na i te mau taata atoa,

another week on the island of Huahine and surprisingly not much to report.

Last wednesday Soeur Spackman and I had a faatamaaraa with the Mami and Papi Taina. Papi Taina is a recent convert and Mami Taina has been a member all her life but is working on coming back to church after being less active for a while. I got to chop open my own coconut with a machete (with a lot help from Papi Taina) and drink out of it.

we later had a lesson with them the next day on the plan du salut bc Mami Taina doesn't remember a lot about the gospel so she wants the lessons again as she is working on coming back to church. During our language study I prepared and practiced the part that i would teach her...in Tahitian because her husband speaks mostly Tahitian and i thought she did too....wrong. she understood a tiny bit of tahitian but preferred french....cool because i had practiced that a ton in french. but when my time came for me to teach her what i practiced Papi Taina basically taught everything for me and interupted me when i tried to speak again. so basically i spoke none in that lesson, bc Soeur Spackman would try to get them back on track but continue with what i had prepared. that was a little frustrating but a lot of our members told us that "you aren't tahitian if you don't interupt people."

we had a lesson with Maire and we were supposed to teach her about the law of tithing BUT she was so upset when we walked in...why? she asked her brother Roger and DMP (ward mission leader)  to call Papi Henri to come to some lessons because he is super knowledgeable about the Bible and she wanted some deep questions asked, but every time we came Papi Henri never came, and we didnt know she asked her brother and DMP this. she told us she just wanted help interpreting some scriptures and at that time she had just finished reading 1 Nephi 8 which is Lehi's dream of the tree of life, which is my FAVORITE chapter in 1 Nephi not gonna lie. So we helped her interpret that and promised we would work on calling Papi Henri ourselves or someone else who would help her be her new member integrator into the paroisse. she was so mad. i can't even describe how fiu (done with everything) she was that day. bless her heart.

we finally get to teach one of our investigators english because she (Mahiata) got a job with one of the tour companies on the island. she is incharge of some tours on the trucks that do the tour d'ile on land and she has to explain some historical imformation to the tourists in English. And her new boss told her she has to learn english in ONE MONTH. so we told her it would be easiest for her to learn English and help her gain knowledge about the gospel if we taught her the lessons we have for her that day in english but also work at simplifiying them ourselves in french since we will be translating back and forth.

That's about it for this week. 3 days ago was 9/11 so my heart was with my American friends and family that day, but it made me greatful for the time i have to spend here and help families come closer to the gospel.

quote of the day from a talk i read from Elder Ballard "I say we keep our antennas up and look out for eachother."